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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 4/26/2006 9:16:34 AM
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Consecrated2God
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Yesterday I did some calling around to see if I could find a place to move to next month. We are needing to find a place that we can live in temporarily until our house sells and we are in a position to buy. I called on one house, and it was a nice house, but it was right by the railroad tracks and $615 a month.  A little out of our price range, but they are sending us an application anyway. I figured I might as well in case I couldn't find anything better.
I also called our landlady from ten years ago that we rented from back when we first got married. She's such a sweet lady. I told her my name and said that I didn't know if she remembered me, but that we had rented from her ten years ago, and she said, "Of course I remember you. I was just about to call you. The offer on the blue house didn't go through, so if you want to buy it, you can." I was kind of surprised, because I was going to ask about renting the blue house, and I was thinking she must have an amazing memory. Then she said, "You were a Luper before you got married, right?" and I realized she was thinking I was my sister-in-law who shares the same name as me. So I explained that no, I was a Luper after I got married and that I was not one of the Luper girls, but that I married the oldest Luper boy. So she finally figured out who I was, and she said to give them some time to think it over and to call them back about the blue house on Saturday or Sunday. It's in the same town as my in-laws, the same town we lived in before we moved her to Missouri. I think (from what she was trying to explain to her husband) that she thinks we want to rent for awhile and then buy it, though, and if my sister-in-law is interested in it, I wouldn't want to rent it out from under them, either.
The third house I called about yesterday sounded the most promising. It's in the same town as my parents. In fact, their backyard touches the backyard of this house. It it owned by a Hispanic family. A couple of years ago, a car off the highway swerved to miss a cat and became airborne and went through the side of this house. They weren't home at the time and no one got hurt, but they had to move out. They collected $20-some thousand in insurance, and went to fix it up. In the process they found termites and most of the insurance money was spent fixing that problem. They've run out of insurance money, and the house isn't ready, but they are really needing to sell it or rent it. She is willing to let us live there free for the first month if we do work on the house in exchange for rent, and if there is still work to be done after that month, to let us live there for very little in exchange for work on the house. It needs carpet, the kitchen is not quite complete, and the yard is trashed. My dad is a good friend of theirs, and he is going to work on an agreement for us. They speak very little English, so it's important to have someone who can make sure that both of us are getting a good deal that would work for both of us. Erick isn't terribly thrilled at the idea of living that close to my parents, but I reminded him I lived in his parents backyard, literally, for a month, and then down the street from them for five years. This would only be a few months.
Btw, showings have picked back up some on the house. We've had three showings since Saturday.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 4/28/2006 8:22:55 AM
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Consecrated2God
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We decided to lower the price on our house some. There are some other comparable houses to ours in our neighborhood that are priced at about $5000 less than ours, so we are going to drop our price to be just under theirs. The realtor suggested it, and we thought it was a good suggestion.
We also have decided to move to the house next to my parents' house. We have agreed to put $300 worth of work into it a month (that can be labor and/or materials) in exchange for rent. We're not technically going to be renters, just guests in their home. My dad said they weren't even worried about the money, they just were eager to have us come live in their house. You see, when they had the deal with the insurance, my family helped them through the process and drove them to the city to get their check. They don't speak much English, and so they needed a lot of help. They consider my parents part of their family, and since they are my parents, they consider Erick and I family as well even though they've never met us. I think that is so sweet. It's going to be such a blessing to us, and we plan on being a blessing back to them by helping fix their house up for them.
We're going to be getting a puppy, too. Erick's family has a dog who had puppies, and they asked us back when we visited them in March if we wanted one. We'll be able to have pets in this house, and so we told them to go ahead and save one for us. Jay is so excited. He fell in love with one of those puppies when we visited. They were only a week old then. These are not going to be small dogs, though--I know they are part Husky, and whatever else they are isn't small either.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 5/1/2006 8:04:13 AM
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Consecrated2God
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Erick got his website done. Check it out! If you do, pretty please sign the guestbook so I know you've been there.
I'm not sure how much longer we'll have internet service here. Our ISP is through Erick's school, and he graduates in three days. I don't know if they just disable your account as soon as you graduate, or how that exactly works. If they, do, I'll be at least three weeks without internet. I hope I can handle it! I hope my blog is still here when I get back. I'd better make sure to PM Fritz about it before Thursday just in case.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 5/5/2006 10:10:38 AM
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Consecrated2God
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I still have internet access!
Maybe, just maybe, they won't disable our account now that Erick isn't a student anymore. 
Our party turned out really good yesterday. We had two families come right about 6:00, and we had a lot of fun. Abby really enjoyed her party. There were some neighbor kids over as well, and she got a Bratz baby from one of them. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like Bratz, and my kids aren't allowed to own them. But, what do you do when you get one as a gift? At least it's just a baby. We decided it's not going to be be a Bratz baby anymore, so we renamed it and it's a Princess baby now.
One thing that was interesting about the bacclaurette ceremony Wednesday night was that they honored a high school graduate before it began and gave him his diploma. He is the homeschooled son of one of the professors, who is also the campus pastor. I didn't even realize he was homeschooled. They said he's lived on campus for the last ten years and attended chapel everyday with the students.
Yesterday at commencement we saw another interesting graduate receive his diploma--the grandfather of another student. They receieved their diploma at the same time. He had been to CBC many years ago, and had finished all of his classes he needed for graduation except two. He went on the mission field, and had arranged to work on his last couple of credits by independent study. He had sent back a manuscript for that class by way of a friend, and as the friend was coming back home on a ship, the wind caught the manuscript and blew it into the ocean. He was a missionary for several decades without ever having graduated from Bible College. When his grandson was getting ready to graduate, he asked if there was anything that could be done so his grandfather could get his diploma. They agreed to graduate him if he could pass an oral test, which he passed 100%. It was really neat.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 5/9/2006 6:03:21 PM
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Consecrated2God
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Our house is still on the market. The contract fell through because the lady changed her mind because she thought the utility bills were too high for her budget.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 5/13/2006 9:33:55 PM
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Consecrated2God
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And now it is time for "Cute Things My Kids Said", the part of my blog where my kids come out and say cute things.
The neighbor girl spent the night last night, and she brought over some of her clothes. My girls were trying on her clothes, and Joy had asked me if she could wear a particular outfit today and I vetoed it because it was too revealing. The neighbor girl told my daughters that I was weird. My 3 year old reported this to me, in tears.
RACHEL: Mom! Shelby said you were weird, and you aren't weird, you are nice!
(Rachel gives me a big hug to comfort me because she expects me to be tramuatized from the news)
ME: Oh, that's okay. I don't mind if she thinks I'm weird.
RACHEL: Come on, Mom. Let's go tell Shelby that you aren't weird,
ME: It's alright, Rachel. All moms are weird sometimes. It's part of our job.
I thought it was sweet of Rachel to stand up for me like that. 
_____________________________
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 5/16/2006 8:42:49 PM
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Consecrated2God
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My boss gave me a digital camera as a going away present! I've been playing around with it, trying to see what all it can do. I'm trying to see if I can figure out how to put up some of the pictures in here like I've seen other people do, but I haven't figured it out yet. Stay tuned!
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 5/22/2006 11:28:51 AM
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Consecrated2God
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Friday was my last day at work. My boss brought me cake, and she teared up when I gave her a card I bought for her. I really am going to miss her. I cried at home that evening and the next morning.
Yesterday was our last day at church. I cried when they had us up on stage to pray for us. I had all these things I was hoping to get to say, and I couldn't even talk because I was so emotional. Erick said everything I wanted to say, anyway. I'm going to miss that church.
They had a little reception at choir practice for me yesterday evening. Happiness came over yesterday afternoon so I could teach her how to sew and bake bread, and she also cut my hair. I tried to pay her but she put the money under my keyboard before we left and I didn't know it until I came home that evening. I'm going to miss her, too.
It's more difficult this time in some ways. When we left Indiana, I knew I'd get to see them again. I don't know if I'll ever see these people again. In a way, I'm going through a grieving process for the people I got to know and love here.
Today we are packing up everything. It's emotionally difficult, too. I just want to go to bed and wake up when it's all over.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 5/31/2006 5:53:04 PM
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Consecrated2God
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Well, we've moved! We've also got a contract on our house. As we were loading the Budget truck, we had a showing. The couple (a nice Christian couple with a little baby daughter) arrived about twenty minutes before the realtor, and I invited them to come in out of the heat since they were there so early. So they were there for a long time, and they loved the house, you could tell. We signed the contract that evening before we left, and actually before they had officially made the offer. The next day they offered us a lower price, and then we gave them a counter offer and they accepted. We sold it for $104,500 and we will pay the closing costs. They have not been pre-approved, but they should qualify for the loan. They had had issues with USDA a year ago when they tried to buy the house down the street and were not approved, but they've resolved those issues and USDA says they should be approved now. The issues were that they were students and they didn't know if they were going to stay in the area. Rather ironic, considering Erick and I got the same loan under the same circumstances. Anyway, they have decided to stay in the area, so that shouldn't be an issue anymore.
We moved last Thursday, and this house is a lot different from the one we are used to. We've got it cleaned up quite a bit, and it's feeling more homey now, but we still don't have carpet on the livingroom floor. A man is coming from Home Depot Friday to measure for it. It has a lot of cracks in the drywall upstairs from the car that went through the wall, and there is a lot of work to do here. We could live here a couple of years with this arrangment (fixing it up in place of rent) although that's not exactly what we want to do.
Today I got my phone and internet turned on, so this is the first time I've been online since we moved.
I started my new job at Taco Bell yesterday. It's okay, but it's not like MY Taco Bell. Today I had the day off, so Erick spent the day putting in applications.
I'll try and get some pictures up fairly soon.
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Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/3/2006 6:41:09 PM
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Consecrated2God
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We still don't have carpet in our new house. The man changed the measuring appointment to Monday. Hopefully soon we'll get carpet.
Erick doesn't have a job yet, either. Pray that he gets one soon! I'm already tired of working full time.
Here is the front of the rental house. It's not too bad from the outside, but there's a pile of trash in the yard (not in the picture) that needs to be hauled away. We're having a difficult time finding anyone that delivers dumpsters out here, so we may be stuck with hauling it off ourselves.
The picture below is of the bathroom. This is the second strangest room in the house. I think it was an afterthought. The metal bathtub is encased in cement. Seriously. I don't know how they did it, but it's surrounded by concrete. There is no shower, only a bath, and no way of making it into a shower, because the toilet paper holder is installed on the wall above the tub. You can see that the sink is added on in a strange place, too. There's a window back there, but it's covered up with insulation. They put in a shower hookup in the bathroom, too. I took the picture before we put in the shower, but it barely fits in sidways between the sink cabinet and the wall. They put the dryer hook-up in the kitchen, btw, so you have to haul the wet clean clothes from the bathroom to the kitchen to dry them. You can also open the cabinet under the sink and look into the basement. You can also see from the stains in the sink that the water has a high iron content here in Indiana. It tastes like you have been sucking on a hanger when you drink it.
That isn't the strangest room, though. The strangest room is Jay's bedroom. It looks like they decided to buy a small barn package and use that to finish it out. It's an inside out barn. The walls are vinyl siding, and the ceiling is that soffit stuff (I'm not sure if that's how you spell it) that they use when they side a house. It's got these funny barn-like closet doors, too. I haven't got a picture of that, though, but maybe later.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/3/2006 6:59:27 PM
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Consecrated2God
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I just wanted to add that these pictures were taken the first night we were there. We've unpacked and cleaned and organized, so it looks a lot nicer now. Just wanted to post that in case anyone was worried about the shower cleaner on the bathroom counter. Don't worry, we don't leave poison within reach of children. 
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/3/2006 8:18:58 PM
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Consecrated2God
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I got a PM from someone saying they can't see my pictures. Can anyone else not see them?
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/5/2006 7:44:08 AM
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Consecrated2God
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Thank you to all of you who have sent me PMs saying they couldn't see my pictures. I've contacted Dianetevegia and she's going to help me get pictures up that people can actually see. She told me that it's because I uploaded my pictures to Bravenet, and they don't allow you to link pictures from their site. I have a day off Tuesday, so I'll probably be able to try it from the place she recommended. There's a thread in Feedback and Help about it, too, where she posted instructions in case anyone else was wanting to try pictures in their blog as well.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/8/2006 7:27:29 PM
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Consecrated2God
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Jay broke his tooth last night.
We were at church, and he was in his class, and from what his teacher said it was hot in there so they took the boys to the playground. Some of the boys got to throwing rocks (small pebbles from the playground) and Jay got hit in the mouth and broke the bottom off of one his teeth. Erick took him into the dentist today and they filed it off and put sealer on it. If the nerve survives, they'll cap it. If not, they'll have to do a root canal. He's pretty sure it will survive, though. The church's insurance will cover it.
Poor kid. He had to eat oatmeal this morning because he couldn't chew apple crisp.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/14/2006 8:08:53 AM
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Consecrated2God
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I am back to moderating again! Beware, all ye trolls! 
Erick hasn't got a job yet, but we are considering self-employment instead. He used to run his own business before we moved to Missouri, and he did fairly well at it. He didn't charge enough, sometimes he made some business mistakes, and we weren't wise with our money, but hopefully we've learned something in the past few years and could make a better living at it now. We know he can get the jobs--last time he had to quit selling jobs six months before we left.
We aren't exactly sure what he wants to start his own business doing, though. He has thought about contract cleaning, and he's always been good at construction-type jobs (he doesn't really want to do roofing again, though, and probably his doctor would have a cow if he did) and he's also got a correspondence degree in small engine repair that he earned back in high school. So for now, we're calling it E. J. Enterprises until he knows for sure what he's doing.
I'm scheduled to work only 25 hours this week, so I'm happy. I'm just going to fill in any gaps in his income though the summer, and until we get a home loan, and he'll do the rest. We're going to try to get pre-approved within the next week for a loan.
So far (and we've only been talking about self-employment for about a week) he's got a small roof lined up, and a kitchen remodel, and a siding job. This last week he made $125 fixing a lawn mower and a weedeater. If he can keep jobs and stay busy, we should be able to make a decent living. I'm also going to be switching to evenings 3 out of 5 days a week so he can have the days to do jobs. I need to work days Wednesdays and Thursdays, though, so I can to church and choir practice.
The biggest reason we are leaning towards self-employment is so he will have the flexibility to help out at the church more. It will be hard to get any ministry experience if he's working all the time. Right now he's enjoying getting some rest from the last four years and catching up on his relationship with God.
We were supposed to have gotten the carpet installed yesterday, but the installers went to pick it up at Home Depot and it was in the back under a pile of stuff, and not cut and ready for them, and they didn't have time to wait around so they called and said it would be Thursday before they could get to it. They told us it would be 72 hours from the time I paid for it, which was last Thursday afternoon. Tuesday was longer than 72 hours anyway, and now it's going to be whole week. Kind of irritating.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/19/2006 1:59:03 PM
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Consecrated2God
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Over the weekend I've been working on setting up a MySpace account. I've enjoyed putting it up, but I'm not going to start blogging there instead of here. I posted a link from there to here if anyone there wants to read my blog. I'm also going to put a link from here to there, so if anyone here wants to read my profile they can. I'll probably keep tweaking it for awhile until I get bored with it, though.
http://www.myspace.com/my6kidsmom
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/23/2006 1:15:42 PM
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Consecrated2God
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We are seriously considering putting on offer on a house we saw today. It's not the one we'd been looking at--it was in need of a lot of repair. It's not that we couldn't have done the work, but the bank won't loan us the money in the condition it's in. So the only way we could have bought it is if we had all the money up front, which we don't. It's kind of disappointing, because we all really liked it, but on the other hand, it would have at least a fifteen minute drive back and forth to church, and gas is high (in case you haven't noticed!)
The house we looked at today needs some work, too, especially upstairs. It's in the same town as our church and would only be a few minutes away. There is also a park within walking distance, and it's on a quiet street. They want $49,900 for it. We're going to offer them $42,000 for it. It has potential, although not as much as the first house. The roof is new, so that's good. One other interesting thing about this house is the garage is full of junk. If they don't clean it out, there may be some treasures in there. It's vacant, and it's "as is", so I think there's a good chance of them leaving it.
It's four bedrooms, but there's another unfinished room that could be made into a fifth bedroom. It has a dining room and a family room, and the kitchen is cute! It has one and a half baths.
Our realtor is going out of town this weekend, so by Monday we should be ready to make an offer.
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Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
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RE: My First Blog (by Lisa Luper) - 6/27/2006 8:50:01 AM
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Consecrated2God
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We put on offer in on a house yesterday--the one I mentioned in my last post. They were asking $49,000, we offered $42,000, and they counter-offered at $45,000 and we accepted it. We also qualified for a no-income no-asset loan that is based entirely on our credit. They have these for people (like us) who have a hard time proving their income. Erick has been getting jobs here and there, and has some lined up, but to try and contruct a financial statement wouldn't be easy since he has no tax records from this new enterprise of his.
We are scheduled to close on this loan on August 21. I'll be looking forward to not having to drive so far to church. It's only about twenty minutes from here, but we go to church a lot and if Erick is going to be helping out there more often, it's going to be necessary to be closer. Part of me still wishes we could live out in the country with no neighbors, but if we are going to be involved in ministry we probably should be closer to the people we want to minister to and not seclude ourselves out in the country.
We still haven't had any call-backs on any of the jobs Erick has applied for, but we are really starting to feel that God is leading us in the direction of self-employment. For one thing, if he's working a 40 hour a week job, he's going to have a hard time putting in any time over at the church. Self-employment would give him the flexibility he needs to get that experience. With this new loan we are getting, I don't have to prove my income and so I'm going to be drastically cutting my hours at work. My working right now is holding him back from getting his business going. He doesn't have enough time to get done what he needs to get done. It just doesn't make any sense for him to have to leave his work making $25+ per hour to come back home so I can get to my $7 an hour job on time.
This house we are buying has a good sized garage, and we could put up a small engine repair sign and he could do work out of the garage. There aren't very many people around here who do that kind of work and they charge a lot and are backed up. There is a lot of work around here to do for someone who will do it--not just small engine repair, but siding, roofing, and other general remodeling jobs.
Erick is loving the slower pace of life. He's been so busy the last four years that he hasnt' had time to just slow down and enjoy life. It's really good for him. We're going through a really neat series at church on Sunday nights called "A Heart Ablaze" and we've been just enjoying this time to rest and get closer to God--stop being Marthas and becoming Marys for a little while.
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